Memoirs and morsels from home and abroad

semi-precious

I got the idea to make a grapefruit mint sorbet from Mimi over at Israeli Kitchen and have had 2 Ruby Reds sitting in my fruit bowl for several days. I’ve been playing with simple syrups and was hoping to have enough mint in my windowsill garden, but, alas, had to wait for yesterday’s shopping trip to stock up. And today I set to work.

The 2 grapefruits only made 1.5 C of juice, so I had to supplement with a bit of juice. No biggie — I had that in the fridge.

What surprised me was seeing the grapefruit juice next to the syrup. The colors looked like jewel tones. Not the precious jewels such as sapphire, my favorite. But the semi-precious kind, like turquoise and blue topaz, my birthstones that I have never liked. I gained a new appreciation for semi-precious jewels, their tones captured by the two liquids I made — rose quartz and peridot, one opaque, the other translucent — beautiful juxtaposed and simply refreshing when mixed and frozen.

Make a simple syrup: Bring water sugar and mint to slow boil until sugar dissolves. Stir mint leaves every once in a while. Once sugar dissolves, allow mix to cool and infuse mint for another 10 minutes or so.

Juice both grapefruits; remove seeds. Strain out pulp if you’d like (I prefer to keep it in).

Once the syrup cools, strain mint, and add to 2 C juice. (Note, I actually made extra mint simple syrup — 3 C each of water, sugar, and a large handful of mint and then added about 1.5 C of the syrup to the juice. I puured the remainder of the simple syrup into a bottle and keep it in my fridge for sweetening iced tea.)

Freeze in flat container for 5 hours.

Aerate with immersion blender. Freeze for 3-4 more hours. Allow to thaw 15-20 minutes before scooping to serve. The texture remains a bit closer to a granita, but is delicious and refreshing.